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Prof. Marco Taisch

Organisation: Politecnico di Milano

Position in the organisation: Professor of Advanced Manufacturing Systems

Biography note: Marco Taisch is full professor at the Politecnico di Milano, where he teaches the courses of Advanced Manufacturing Systems and Industrial Technologies. He has been the director of the Executive MBA and the full time International MBA of the School of Management of Politecnico di Milano. He is one of the members of the Strategic Advisory Board of VTT. The team of Manufacturing Management and Engineering that he is leading counts around 30 researchers working in the field of operations and supply chain management, with a particular focus on design and management of manufacturing systems, Sustainable and Energy Efficient Manufacturing and Industrial Services, Product Lifecycle Management. The team took part in more than 20 international funded projects. He has published four books and more than 115 papers in international journals and conference proceedings. He chairs since 2007 the IFIP Working Group 5.7 on Advances in Production Management Systems. He is in the editorial board of Production Planning & Control, the International Journal of Management in Education and the Int. Journal of Sustainable Manufacturing & Renewable Energy. Currently he is member of the Industrial Research Advisory Group (IRAG) of EFRRA, the European Factory of the Future Research Association. Prof. Marco Taisch is also acting as member of the Program Committee the World Manufacturing Forum.

Presentation:

Plenary Session P5 – “How to Attract on a Global Scale young Talents to Manufacturing”

One of the main problem manufacturing companies are facing now is the recruitment of the proper workforce. In the report “The Future of Manufacturing” published in April 2012 by the World Economic Forum, the ‘talent- driven innovation’ has been recognised by CEO the top priorities for the competitiveness of the companies, even more important than the cost of labour, material and energy. Said that, when asking young talents, their understanding of what manufacturing of the future is far from the truth, being still considered a non-attractive environment and a not promising job. But as we know this is not the truth. In fact, with the shrinking of distances to create the global village coupled with the ever faster pace of advances in technology and process innovation, one can state clearly that manufacturing is in a state of constant innovation. The factory of the industrial revolution, where the shopfloor was neither safe nor clean, is being replaced by factories where lean and TQM have dramatically changed the work environment. A fundamental switch has taken place, where in the beginning the workers were workers carry out repetitious tasks, now the focus is on cognitive interaction with the work environment through ICT. The speech aims at exploring how young talents could be attracted and which role the policy makers and the companies at global level should have in order to guarantee this fundamental resource to Manufacturing.